Buying Burnt Land - Northern New Mexico may have a lot to choose from in the coming year...

What does everyone think about buying land after a big fire has blown across it?  I'm in Santa Fe at the moment watching smoke billowing both in the east (with one fire approaching the Los Alamos Nuclear Labs) and the west (where there's lots of prime areas, either arable land or perfect for agroforestry).  

Last summer I drove through some of those areas now burning, searching for parcels.  From what I've seen, a lot of the western side of the state was first settled by Spanish colonists, and their heirs have stayed on down through the generations.  It's really awesome land, too.  Plenty of precipitation even in drought years and overall just incredibly prisitine. Unfortunately, I see very little actual farming other than an occasional hay field.  Didn't buy anything, though.   Prices are through the roof out here, even in less desirable, high altitude realms, such as the area north of Taos.

Anyway, I imagine a number of these burnt properties will hit the market next fall or spring (assuming the multi-billion-dollar fire-fighting effort eventually gets this situation under control).  Just wondering if anyone has experience or knowledge about how to turn scorched earth back to life, and about how long it would take, either by simply sheet mulching the no-till way, or by way of somewhat more aggressive (but not too overbearing) means to recreate more or less the the same type of ecosystem.

In Australia, I had a bush fire on my small farm.
Within a few days I pumped water over as much ground as I could, and left it.
Within a few days regrowth started and 3 years later there was a distinct line in the ground between the watered and the non watered ground.
The regrowth difference was amazing.

Instead of

Throw down lots of pasture seed mix.  Weed control.

Would a native grass mix be better?

While I have no problem with land that has been burned, to my mind the American south and especially the SW is going to become largely uninhapitable. Where I live in the PNW, previously burned land won't burn again in the near future, making it prime real estate. Others may disagree but such is life.

So we should burn all land and wait for the economic bonanza that will sweep by?

There are some 50-lb bags of pasture seed mixes that have more native (to colorado) grasses and plants, and there are some 5-lb bags that are even better mixtures, but are apparently sold by the ounce. It's slightly possible that I went with the more frugal version, as there was more homesteader in me than permie, at the time.

On land like this property that was 100% pine with thick undergrowth, it was indeed a spot that was destined to burn, and needed only a "perfect storm" (red flag day, lightning strike or an idiot) to get it going.

At the micro-level of our individual properties, there is something we can do about it. Mitigation, in all its forms ... in this thread is one of the answers, and is how we are protecting our current property (40 acres) from that next perfect storm:

https://permies.com/t/179791/wildfire/Mulch-clearing-fire-mitigation

My land was once in one of those Spanish Land Grants, in 1995 some heirs sold some of the property.  Many of the descendants still own a large chunk of that grant.

I feel those land grants that you referred to will still remain in the family unless a developer offers some really big buck.  I don't feel that is going to happen in fire-prone areas.

I would not want to buy land in a fire-prone area for several reasons. The biggy would be I don't want to see all my hard work burn up.

Next is that I would want a nice place to live and don't want to pay for high insurance costs or to self-insure.

If I inherited some land that had been burned, I would first
rent equipment or hire someone to clean up the land and make compost piles of the debris.

Next, I would have lots of wood chips, mulch, or whatever kind of organic matter brought in.

Third, I would start growing mushrooms to help cleans the soil and rebuild the soil.

You have gotten some great suggestions that I hope will help you make a decision on what to do.

I think this is a great opportunity and awesome idea. Permaculture needs a win in the semi-arid, temperate, and high altitude area - or as I call it high, dry, and cold. I also am attempting a food forest in the area of Trinidad which is the pinyon-juniper biome. At this point, there is zero-zilch-and no profitable permaculture in these areas. Mark Sheppard theorized that food forests would be possible in this area using pinyons, and we need more people to test that idea.

I would recommend using both species of pinyon pinus monophylla and pinus edulis planted inside swales. They have different reproductive cycles so this will spread out your yields as edulis only yields nuts every 4-7 years. In the understory, there should be a yield of berries like serviceberry, raspberry (drought resistant variety), golden currants, and goji berries. Nitrogen fixers such as buffaloberry, caragana, and goumi berry could provide the fertility. Sheep, goats and chickens can run through the between-trees lanes to round out the system. If you want to do vegetables, then you need serious below grade hugels with at least 5 feet of woody material and surrounded with windbreaks.

First priority (if you buy now) is to dig swales in and at least straw bales along the contours to keep all that ash from being washed away in July's monsoon. Spend the money on the excavator.

Anne Miller wrote: If I inherited some land that had been burned, I would first rent equipment or hire someone to clean up the land and make compost piles of the debris.  Next, I would have lots of wood chips, mulch, or whatever kind of organic matter brought in. Third, I would start growing mushrooms to help cleans the soil and rebuild the soil.

I liked everything you recommended, except I wouldn't hire anyone to clean up the land.  I feel like I would want to spend a little time listening to what whatever life is still there underground wants to see happen.  (Yes, I'm big on some of those permaculture principles).  There are some good reasons to dig and engage in other invasive activities in order to get crops up and growing, as well as carving out rainwater harvesting  earthworks to infiltrate the soil with water, as someone else emphasized. But even before I would buy property that's had such a shock, I would want to do something, maybe a ritual, to recognize so much devastation and loss of life.  Just out of respect.  

Rosemary said, "I liked everything you recommended, except I wouldn't hire anyone to clean up the land.

I probably needed to go into more detail on this clean up.

I thought saying to put it in a compost pile was enough.

I am not recommending bringing in bulldozers to scrape the dirt into a pile. I only assume that is what you thought I meant.

Small piles of the brush make great shelters for wildlife so those piles will help bring the wildlife back.

I am not one who wants to disturb the soil.

There is a property not far from me that burned prior to me buying my property in 2013.  It is sad to see it just sitting there with those high bog cedar trees that died in the fire.  After all these years it still look much like it did in 2013.

Heading up into San Miguel & Mora when the fires die down to assess friends' places (00s of acres crossing valleys between mesas) for which decades ago I had worked up forest & watershed restoration plus climate heating & drying adaptation plans, which they never implemented.  Then as now I had recommended on slopes and breaks, starting immediately: felling, swales, natives seeding bands, all on contour.  That will help hold soil & rain, and then visible comparisons between un- vs treated strips will be instructive as to further steps.

Isn't one of the underlying principles of permaculture to take degraded land and rehabilitate it?

I think yes, so I'm on the side of giving Mother Nature a helping hand.

However, I'm also a realist, so I would not only want to come up with a plan to heal the land, but also to help it not burn in the future - or at least not all burn at once. Fire is one of nature's ways of resetting the clock on forests, but we've interfered with the natural process to increase the risks of it going catastrophic.

I've been having some "fun" watching College sponsored videos about North American Geology and Archeology over the winter. I've found it really interesting to see how land and it's use by humans, has changed over extremely long time, and how that affects the ecosystem that is suitable now. This might also be worth researching as part of forming a plan if anyone decides to buy some of that damaged land.

Anne Miller wrote:

I am not recommending bringing in bulldozers to scrape the dirt into a pile. I only assume that is what you thought I meant.

Yes, I misunderstood.  I see you're on permies.com staff, so that would have been a strange thing to say, wouldn't it?  Anyway, thanks for participating in the project.  I only wish there were some type of website where permaculture women could connect for the purposes of networking about land availability.  There are free apps for building a forum which I could probably do and create a website for it, but I'm working on a nonprofit homesteading assistance program, so that will have to wait.  I created a FB page "Permaculture Women's Exchange" but haven't able to advertise that, so very little traffic at the moment.

UPDATE ON NEW MEXICO FIRES - The Forest Service closed the Santa Fe and Carson forests yesterday. Guess they're planning for these fires to go on for another couple months. Getting out to the burned areas is not going to happen soon, in any case, and everything else in northern New Mexico in the way of potential homesteads is not worth the price.  The Colorado Plateau is an inhospitable place, except for the sheltered nook here and there. If my had my druthers, I would try be near one of the pueblos so I can connect with Native Americans.  They know a little something about land stewardship and surviving in tough straits, and I would like to access that knowledge base and enter into some sort of mutual assistance pact, the way the plants and animals do it in their ecosystems.  I also took photos last summer of an adobe house under construction on Taos Pueblo territory.  It was two stories and long, with lots of lumber framing surrounded by drying adobe bricks stacked in place.  Oh, and there was a concrete foundation.  Still, constructing such a house would be more affordable and easier to accomplish than a conventional house, and could house more than one family.

AS FOR THE AFFORDABILITY CONUNDRUM,  I'm starting to think that the best approach is for lots of people to throw in together and get a professional broker to find a large parcel that can then be subdivided, then buy it and write up the covenants sans all the usual anti-homesteading restrictions being slapped on most other subdivisions.